Oregon Figure-Eight Tour, Day 2

Day 2 – July 3, 2010 (Saturday)

Start: Fossil, OR
End: Enterprise, OR
Mileage: 287 miles

The first task of the day was figuring out how our gear exploded and how to get it all back into our luggage and on the bikes.

As I packed up the food, I noticed some tiny bite marks on a package of pita bread. And some crumbs. Uh oh.

Me: “Looks like a critter got into the food last night.”
Stacey: “You mean you didn’t hear it?”
Me: “No! Did you?”
Stacey: “How could you not hear it? It was right next to you!”
Me: “I seriously didn’t hear anything.”
Stacey: “You weren’t moving so I thought you didn’t care. Then I got out my headlamp and shined the light at it and shooed it away.”
Me: …

Ahh, well. That’s what I get for being too lazy to hang the food sack.

Stacey, amused that I failed to wake up while a critter made off with some of our food.

Bonus tip: To keep nocturnal critters out of your food, place all food into a stuff sack and tie off the end with a string. Throw the string over a tree limb and hang the sack out of reach. This won’t stop 100% of critters, but it does help. If you can’t hang your food out of the way and you plan on storing the food inside cloth luggage (saddlebags, tailpacks, etc), leave a zipper open on the luggage before you turn in for the night — this will keep critters from chewing their way through your expensive gear.¹

We loaded up the bikes and headed out around 10am,² backtracking 20 miles back to Condon. Here’s a sign next to the only gas station in town:

We then set out for Heppner. Routes 206/207 were excellent, meandering through rolling farmland and the occasional set of extreme twisties to keep things interesting. Most of the twisty sections featured significant drop-offs to the side and no guardrails, and it was a bit tricky to judge the depths of corners against the featureless green backdrops of the surrounding wheat fields.

After a quick lunch and gas stop in Heppner, we headed for Ukiah via the Willow Creek Scenic Byway. This road is simply fantastic. It’s very scenic, very curvy, and best of all has very little traffic.

A photo that does very little justice to the panorama overlooking the descent down into Ukiah.

The gas station in Ukiah featured this interesting advertising contraption.

Climbing into the hills again just south of Ukiah.

Stacey showing what she thinks of the ride so far.

A scenic overlook further into the hills.

Mountains, mountains, mountains.

Of course, with me leading the way, there had to be a wrong turn somewhere. Instead of turning on 51 toward Granite and Anthony Lakes Hwy, I took a wrong turn and didn’t notice for miles. (On the map above, it’s the sharp u-turn north heading toward La Grande.) I started getting suspicious when the road surface suddenly turned terrible, and then confirmed it when we found ourselves next to the Grande Ronde River.

It’s hard to tell by the picture, but the river feels like it’s right up against the road. The riverbank isn’t sloped much, so the effect of the running water right next to the road is disconcerting.

Taking the wrong turn wasn’t a big deal since we were heading to La Grande anyway. We decided to roll with it, and arrived in La Grande around 3 pm for gas and a quick beverage stop. We left town hoping to find a camping spot off of Hwy 82, which wasn’t going to be easy since it was the Saturday of the holiday weekend.

As expected, the first campground we tried was packed with RVs, car campers, loud stereos, and screaming children. I wasn’t very enthused about this spot, so we pressed on. My map showed a campground south of Lostine at the end of a paved road so we headed for that.

We found the road heading out of Lostine, and there was indeed a park where the pavement ended. Unfortunately, the map was wrong and it wasn’t a campground, just a day-use area. And right after that the road turned to gravel. I should have taken this as a sign, but the map showed a couple more campgrounds up the road, and by now we were pretty tired and just wanted to stop.

We found another campground all right, after 6 or 7 miles of gravel. The remaining spots sucked and there was no water.³ We debated staying, but then one of us would have to ride the 20 miles (round-trip) back to Lostine for water on a mostly gravel road. And while the campground was in a very pretty mountain canyon, this also meant that it was already near-dark between the mountain walls and getting darker by the minute.

Then Stacey suggested that we ditch this place and go to Enterprise for a hotel room. Well, it didn’t take me too long to agree!

So we turned around, rode 10 miles back to Lostine, and headed to Enterprise, where we found a very clean room at a small hotel and margaritas at the Mexican place next door.

More to come…

1. Unless you have bat-like ears like Stacey does and can wake up to defend your stash. [↩]
2. Which would become a recurring theme during this trip. What can I say, we’re not the hurrying kind. [↩]
3. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d brought my water filter, but I didn’t, alas. [↩]

Tagged as: Motorcycling